Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The music industry is reportedly furious with Amazon over Cloud Player, the e-commerce giant’s new music streaming service. The conflict has the potential to boil over into court and place consumers in the crossfire.

Amazon Cloud Player allows users to upload their music archives to Amazon’s servers. Once uploaded, customers can access their playlists and stream their music from any compatible computer or Android device (check out our initial review to learn more).

The streaming capabilities of Cloud Player is rubbing the music labels the wrong way though, according to Reuters. Apparently the labels were informed of Amazon’s new cloud-based music service just last week and Amazon only recently brought up the issue of music licensing.

“We hope that they’ll reach a new license deal, but we’re keeping all of our legal options open,” a Sony Music spokesper son told Reuters.

Are Amazon’s Users At Risk In a Legal Battle?

It’s no surprise that the music labels have already brought up the potential for legal action; after all, the recording industry is known for its lawsuits. The central issue here is whether it’s illegal for Amazon to provide music streams that users have individually uploaded to the technology company’s servers.

There’s another potential legal wrinkle in this whole debate: what if the labels sue Amazon, demanding it to turn over personal data on users they suspect have uploaded illegally-obtained music? As one of Mashable‘s commenters pointed out, Amazon Cloud Player’s Term of Use states that music that infringes on the rights of any copyright owners isn’t allowed. In addition, it says that user is “responsible for complying with all applicable import, re-import, export, and re-export control laws and regulations.̶ 1;